Field of Invention
The present application pertains to programmable link aggregation of wireless wide-area network and wireless local area network radio access technologies.
Discussion of Related Art
The patent specification U.S. Pat. No. 9,294,926 B2 presents a method and apparatus for integrating 3GPP and IEEE 802.11 radio access technologies. Architectures for integrating these interfaces at the MAC layer or below the MAC layer are specified. New interfaces between the 802.11 access point (AP) and another AP, eNB and AP are defined. Signaling for various operations such as measurement reporting, mobility, etc. are specified. A session management entity is described for the coordination of the 3GPP radio resource control entity and 802.11 MAC.
The patent specification U.S. Pat. No. 9,119,154 B2 specifies architectures and procedures for the integration of WWAN (such as LTE or WiMAX) and WLAN (such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) radio access technologies where WWAN is regarded as the primary cell and WLAN is regarded as the secondary cell. A multi-RAT aggregation and coordination module is specified within the radio resource control unit of the primary radio that coordinates the use of secondary radio at the unlicensed spectrum for data transfer. In a similar setup, the patent application US 2014/0050086 A1 specify system and methods for offloading traffic from WWAN to WLAN at the IP, PDCP, RLC or MAC layers managed by a radio resource controller (RRC) or a MAC scheduler with RRC control. Another related patent specification U.S. Pat. No. 8,817,623 B2 describe methods for the aggregation of WWAN and WLAN carriers, where, discovery, association and flow switching techniques are disclosed. A dynamic flow mapping module forms a flow-mapping table and a routing module routes the flows to one of WWAN and WLAN radios based on the flow mapping table.
The patent application US 2016/0037380 A1 disclose techniques and apparatus for scheduling in wireless networks using traffic aggregation, where the user equipment (UE) is associated with two radio access technology (RAT) access points, receives parameters from the first access point (AP) for scheduling communications with the second AP. The parameters used for scheduling can include maximum packet size or packet size to communicate with the second AP, target or maximum throughput to communicate with the second AP, transmit buffer status report, ratio of the utilized resources, throughputs, buffer levels, etc., in communication to first and second AP, etc.
The patent application US 2015/0350954 A1 specifies methods, apparatus and architectures for routing data bearers, when the user equipment is associated with the base station of the first radio access technology and served by the base station of a second radio access technology.
The patent application US 2015/0350952 A1 discloses priority based mechanisms to handle conflicting triggers related to WWAN-WLAN offloading and aggregation. The priority rules are determined based on received configuration information and the UE may give priority to aggregation (or offloading) over offloading (or aggregation) based on the priority rules.
The patent application US 2014/0369329 A1 specify techniques for the aggregation of LTE and Wi-Fi radio access technologies, that select the LTE, Wi-Fi or both interfaces for the transmission of data packets to a user equipment. Selection criteria such as link qualities, link loads, backhaul loads, etc. are suggested.
The patent application US 2014/0341109 discloses a converged gateway (CGW) that makes policy based routing decisions such as segregation/aggregation of flows, for aggregated RATs. Goals and techniques such as dynamic flow management, load balancing, offloading, etc. may be provided or implemented by the suggested CGW. The patent application describes methods for identifying the type of the received flow using shallow or deep packet inspection and transmitting the flow via the first or second RAT based on stored policy and flow identification result.
The patent application US 2014/0133456 A1 specifies systems and methods for the dynamic virtualization of multi-access wireless networks where a heterogeneous mesh network of multiple RATs are connected to a cloud component, which appears to all radio access technologies as a single virtual base station. Paging and handover strategies are presented.
Embodiments of the present invention are an improvement over prior art systems and methods.